Research study after research study shows the importance of parent and family support for sparking kids’ interests in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and then helping them stay interested and succeed in STEM as they grow. But how exactly do parents provide helpful support?
A recent study from my team of researchers at Michigan State University (Dorrance Hall et al., 2025) reports on how parents support girls pursuing STEM and women majoring in STEM in college. We interviewed Black, Latina, and white women majoring in STEM across the United States and asked them about the STEM-related support they received while growing up. The findings identify five ways parents can provide much-needed support throughout childhood and adolescence.
1. Advice
Advice, or instrumental support, was the most commonly reported type of support received from parents. Parental advice was useful for navigating important decisions like choosing a major and career path. Parents suggested majors and careers, told girls how to apply for college, provided study tips, and shared job and internship postings. Women appreciated advice that was clear, relevant to their interests, and concrete as opposed to general. They disliked advice that focused on what the parents wanted them to do over their own interests.
2. Resources
Another major way parents can support their children’s interests in STEM is to provide resources such as STEM books and materials, enroll them in after-school activities, and take them to museums. Women reflected on more surprising forms of support that do not cost a lot of money as well—things like cooking meals for them so they could focus on their homework, giving them rides to and from classes, and investing their time to help with challenging assignments.
3. Comfort and empathy
Parents can provide comfort, empathy, and emotional support as they cope with the challenges of pursuing STEM. Challenges, such as feeling like they don’t belong in their classes or activities and not seeing themselves as scientists in online representations (just to name a few), are amplified for women and people in other underrepresented groups. Children in these groups likely need additional support to succeed in STEM.
Fortunately, there are a lot of ways parents can provide emotional support, starting with comfort and empathy. Emotional support has physiological and emotional health benefits, and parents can provide it even if they have very limited knowledge about STEM. Simply validating that STEM is hard and that the challenges their children are facing are stressful can go a long way. Parents can also help their children gain perspective by reminding them why they are pursuing STEM, that grades only matter so much, and that a semester or school year is temporary. Parents can talk about their children’s skills and their confidence in their kids’ ability to succeed.
4. Encouragement and affirmations
Similar to emotional support, parents can encourage and affirm their children’s strengths by providing esteem support. To do this, parents can express pride in their kids’ accomplishments, remind them they are smart, and show them they believe in them to boost their confidence. This type of support can improve self-esteem and well-being and protect against self-doubt.
5. Social connections
Parents can also help their children network with others and teach them to ask for help when they need it. Women shared that their parents used their networks to introduce them to new opportunities or help them find the information they needed when the parents did not personally know how to help them. Parents found other adults who had firsthand knowledge about the industry their child was interested in or showed their children how to ask others for help.
Women majoring in STEM described a lot of different things their parents said or did as supportive. This shows that parents have a lot of choice when it comes to how to best support their child. There was not a one-size-fits-all way to be supportive. Instead, parents should stay attuned to what their child needs at their current developmental stage and think about what would be most helpful for the specific challenges they are facing.
Parents can improve their support by making their advice specific and relevant to their child. This could look like saying, “I remember you telling me you were interested in learning about the different types of engineering. Let’s check out these programs that introduce kids to a wide variety of things engineers can do.”
Even if the support a parent gives is not exactly what is needed at the time, women in our study told us that the simple act of receiving support was helpful. Parents showing up, listening, reaching out, and making an effort go a long way in helping women succeed in STEM.